Tag: Matt Serra

(Were you the country bumpkin that called me a Guido, or was it Hughes?)

It might be just me, but every time I see or even hear Matt Serra on camera, I expect him to have a trio of deli meats clenched in one fist and a bottle of Patron in the other. He exudes the Long Island Italian meathead stereotype more than any other professional fighter out there, and although I normally despise those people, I can’t help but laugh when he launches into his shtick. It’s kind of like how if you were to take Sofia Vergara’s voice and implant it into anyone else but her, the results would be gratingly annoying rather than hilarious and enthralling.

Whether you agree or not with the above statement will likely impact your excitement to learn that “The Terra” recently…hosted (?) a video blog for the UFC called Fight Camp Insider. And wouldn’t you know it, Serra managed to not only snag fellow wordsmith Chael Sonnen for an interview, he ended up spending the whole day with him. Needless to say, a good time was had by all.

With tomorrow night’s UFC 145 main event slated as a 4-1 squash match, the CP gang is talking upsets for today’s installment of the CagePotato Roundtable. If you have a topic-suggestion for a future Roundtable column, please send it to tips@cagepotato.com, and share your own MMA-upset testimonials in the comments section…

While I normally disagree with that crazy fanboy (hey Sodak) explaining to me how Fedor is an intelligent machine, sent back in time to destroy craniums and assassinate Andrei Arlovski, I completely wrote off Werdum here. Like, no way a guy who hung out in Minotauro Nogueira’s guard for six days is going to get tapped by a dude who calls himself “Go Horse” and smiles like this, right? So yeah, I gave him no chance of pulling out a victory. I could be on tape somewhere saying that he had no chance, in an obnoxiously opinionated manner. I may also be credited with one of the worst predictions in CP history.

Georges St-Pierre might want to re-examine his choice of training partners for his upcoming UFC 137 bout with Carlos Condit on October 29. You would think he would be picking the brain of his friend and teammate Rory MacDonald, who was seven seconds away from upsetting the former WEC welterweight champ at UFC 115 before getting TKO’d by “The Natural Born Killer.” Instead, “Rush” is thinking outside the box and has brought in Dan Hardy, who hasn’t won a fight since 2009, to help him prepare for the only guy to have knocked “The Outlaw” out. Makes sense, right?

Earlier this week UFC fighter Krzysztof Soszynskimade the bold statement that the vast majority of MMA fighters—somewhere between 85-96%–are getting some sort of illegal chemical boost in the training room. Yesterday a bigger, more easily-spelled name in the sport spoke out in support of those allegations. In an interview with MMA Weekly, Matt Serra weighed in on what he considers to be a serious problem in the fight game.

“It’s wrong man, it’s really wrong. Let me tell you something. I got to the title without doing anything. I didn’t use anything,” Serra commented. “Me and BJ Penn are in that small percentage that don’t do (expletive). There’s a lot of guys that are considered legends, and they’re doing the GH and doing this and that, and it’s obvious, it’s freaking obvious.”

A couple of weeks before UFC 133 in Philadelphia, Dana White made an appearance on Philly’s Preston and Steve show on WMMR to promote the show. Preston and Steve, being the wacky morning radio show duo they are, invited local comic and YouTube star Ed Bassmaster down to meet the Baldfather as one of his many alter-egos. Dana obviously had no idea who this guy was, as he completely bought that Skippy was just your average TUF fan in khakis and comically thick glasses.

So what happens when you ask Dana why he frequently seems upset and angry?

Well, Dana was so amused that he decided to have Ed wander the locker rooms and hallways at the event, doing interviews and trying to put some moves on Chandella. Of course, what he really wanted to do was get Skippy in the same room with Lorenzo Fertitta and sit back and watch the big guy squirm.

(“I’d rather lose the best fight of my life than win the worst.” Photo courtesy of Sherdog)

On August 14th, Chris Lytle will step into the Octagon for the 20th time in his career, when he squares off against Dan Hardy at the aptly-named UFC Live: Hardy vs. Lytle in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It will be Lytle’s first-ever headlining bout for the UFC — as well as an opportunity to re-claim the title of “Most Bonus-Worthy Fighter in UFC History.” (He currently shares the honor with Anderson Silva and Joe Lauzon.) We recently spoke to “Lights Out” about some of his most memorable UFC fights, his upcoming scrap against Hardy, his crowd-pleasing style, and the tough lessons he’s learned along the way. Enjoy…

“I’d been fighting for less than two years at the time, but as soon as I started training, I got really involved in watching the UFC. I knew who all the key guys were and I knew it was the pinnacle of the sport, so it was my goal to be there. We only fought two five-minute rounds [at UFC 28], and they’d started having fighters wear gloves not too long before, so it was just way different. Earwood was more of a wrestler — he just tried to hold me down. I don’t think they stood us up once.

Back then I was training with Jason Godsey and a few other guys maybe two or three times a week. Every one of us had real jobs, full-time jobs, and this was something we did for fun. I definitely felt like we were good fighters — Jason was King of Pancrase, and beat a lot of good guys — but we didn’t train every day. And after that fight I kind of realized…I didn’t feel like Earwood was any better of a fighter than me, I just felt like he had a better gameplan than I did, he stuck with it, and he trained more than I did.

One of our favorite online obsessions over the last month has been awesome people hanging out together, a tumblr photo blog devoted to celebrities mingling in unexpected combinations. (I mean, seriously: Dylan and Ali?Alice Cooper and Colonel Sanders? Epic.) Since there are aren’t any MMA fighters represented on the site, we decided to do some online crate-digging of our own and put together a CagePotato version of the “awesome people” photo-phenomenon. Enjoy these rare and classic MMA photos, which continue after the jump, and shoot us some links in the comments section if we’ve left out any of your favorites.

(Actually, make that the “9 MMA Fights That Were Over Before They Started.”)

By Cage Potato contributor Chris Colemon

Your average Mixed Martial Artist devotes three months of his life to preparing for a fight. That’s ninety days of rigorous training and dieting; ninety days of mental preparation and time spent away from friends and family. That great sacrifice becomes worthwhile the moment the bell rings and he gets to show the world what ninety days of commitment can bring. There are few better ways of displaying your hard work than to shut down your opponent in the blink of an eye. After months of speculation, hype, and anticipation, you could say that such fights were over before they even began. You could say that, but you’d be wrong. That ignoble distinction belongs to a whole other category of fights. Fights that didn’t end with a winner and a loser. Fights that didn’t make the sacrifice of training worthwhile. Fights that were truly over before they began.

MMA in itself is purely a sport, but every promotion walks a line somewhere between sport and entertainment; where that line is drawn is up to each organization. While some fans prefer the more straightforward, professional production values of the UFC, others long for the rich pageantry and theatrics of Pride. No matter where you stand, everyone likes a fight full of fireworks. Well, everyone other than Johil de Oliveira. A victim of Pride’s WWF-esque walkouts, de Oliveira was warming up backstage for his Pride 9 bout with Matt Serra when he stepped on part of the pyrotechnic display, setting it off like a landmine. He was rushed to the hospital with serious burns, setting a record for ‘most baked fighter’ that would stand until Pride 33. Johil would recover and fight again just six months later, though he still suffers the inability to shave frequently or sunbathe – a fate worse than death for a Brazilian.

As we recently learned, the next season of The Ultimate Fighter will be coached by a grumpy mountain man who probably won’t spend any more time on set than he absolutely needs to, and a Brazilian dynamo whose grasp on the English language is limited to simple phrases like “I believe too much in my boxing” and “tub you are a cold — so we’re not expecting a verbal rivalry on par with Tito/Ken or Rampage/Rashad. Still, it’s TUF, so somebody’s gonna get told at some point. Can this season’s insults possibly stack up to some of our past favorites?

#5: “You’re like an expert swimmer who’s never been in a pool.”

Matt Serra’s epic dress-down of Marc Laimon was his star-making moment — and a firm bitch-smack to every sideline-hater who talks tough without any intention of actually backing up his words. A year later, Serra was coaching that damn show.

Like a Katy Perry song, it’s annoying as hell, and yet you can’t get it out of your head. “Bro, you’re a male nurse” — I say that to all my friends now, no matter what their professions actually are. And it aggravates them too.